Related Press Releases

The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) is disappointed with the recently published Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rule that will expand the information DHS says it collects on immigrants to include social media handles and aliases, search results, and “associated identifiable information.” The rule, which takes effect on Oct. 18, 2017, will apply to lawful permanent residents, naturalized U.S. citizens, their relatives and associates, and many who assist in immigration proceedings.

Through a new grant from Democracy Fund, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) will conduct a two-year research project aimed at addressing key election cybersecurity issues, such as voter registration and campaign data management.

New York Times: A company called Clear is using fingerprints and iris scans to spare some passengers the first phase of the T.S.A.’s security airport screening process — the document-verification checkpoint and its line. Clear says it can speed fliers through checkpoints while maintaining tight security. But the rollout process has been slow — Clear is available only in some terminals at 24 domestic airports — an earlier iteration of the company had a data security issue.

ABC News: A vending machine software firm recently implanted about four dozen of its employees with Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) microchips that it says will allow the employees to navigate the office more conveniently. But the move has raised concerns about potential ethical and security issues.

Today, Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the ECPA Modernization Act of 2017, legislation that would modernize the privacy laws that protect the digital communications of all Americans. The bill, which would fundamentally reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, is more comprehensive than previous reform efforts. CDT has been a leading advocate for major ECPA reform to protect privacy in the digital age and strongly supports this bipartisan legislation.

CNN: “These are very stark recommendations,” said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “Election officials don’t realize how much of what they do implicates concepts of security and defense, and they’re also protecting against the worst hackers out there: nationstate adversaries.”

Washington Post: “She emailed the Intercept using her work computer,” said Michelle Richardson, a privacy expert at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington think tank. “They can monitor the traffic on their systems, look at the six people who printed the doc, and see that she was the one who had contact.”

CNN: CDT Chief Technologist Joseph Lorenzo Hall joins Brian Todd to talk about how the government might have used dots embedded in printed materials to trace classified NSA documents obtained by the Intercept back to alleged leaker Reality Winner.

Washington Post: “May’s government now has incredible compulsory powers to do both targeted and bulk surveillance in her country,” said Michelle Richardson, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based think tank. “The only thing left you could seem to grab would be a complete surveillance state. If you’re proposing to go even further than the current authority, there’s not much you could do beyond that that isn’t an explicit attack on human rights.”

The NSA is stopping a controversial part of its warrantless surveillance conducted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which permits the targeting of non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. It reportedly abandoned the practice of collecting communications that merely mention an identifier associated with a target, such as an email address or telephone number. This “about” collection swept in many communications that involved Americans. NSA will continue to collect communications to which the target is actually a party. CDT has advocated against this form of untargeted surveillance.